If you’re new to commissioning an animation, you might wonder what steps we need to go through to get from that initial enquiry to delivering your finished video! We have a thorough process we work through with our clients which means they are involved at every stage.
Square Daisy Animated Process Video from Square Daisy on Vimeo.
1 – Initial Meeting & Proposal
The first stage of any animation project is meeting with our client – that’s you! This meeting can be over the phone, video call or in person and it’s really to learn all about what you do, who your customers are and what you’re looking to achieve with the animation project.
Once we’ve got a good idea of your brief we go away and produce an initial proposal. This thorough document will give you a really clear idea of the visual approach we think would work best and a transparent breakdown of the budget.
2 – Production Meeting
When you’re happy with the proposed concept, approach and budget, we’re ready to get started on the project! The next step is a production meeting, where we spend time together to establish exactly what content needs to be in the video and the key messages. We will also refine any aspiration from you about visual style and how we can incorporate your brand voice into the animation.
3 – Script Writing
For projects that require a voiceover, the next stage is scriptwriting. We should have all the information we need for writing the script from the production meeting, but if you’re product or service is particularly technical we may also need a briefing note from you, with bullet points covering key messages.
We find we are often better positioned to write the script ourselves as we can view it objectively and put ourselves in the shoes of our customers. We’re also pretty good at getting the word count spot on for the agreed duration of the video! We get lots of clients asking us about creating a 30-second animation, but a script that length roughly equates to around 70 words, which isn’t a great deal of time to get across your key messages. Now we don’t think longer is necessarily better, but for less well-known brands, ensuring your video covers the important messages often requires more than 70 words.
We’ll send you the first draft when we’re done so you can add your comments and we’ll repeat this process until everyone is happy!
4 – Voiceover
Once the script is finalised and approved we work with you to find the voice of your animation. We work with a range of artists and agencies so we’re confident we’ll be able to find a good match for your story and brand. There are a couple of things to consider like usage and buy-out, but we liaise directly with the artist so you don’t need to worry about a thing. It’s really important to lock down the script prior to recording as the voiceover artists have to book out studio time and are entitled to additional charges if there are changes after the initial recording of an approved script.
5 – Storyboarding
The script doesn’t just inform the voiceover – it’s also crucial to the storyboarding phase as it informs the structure of the video. The storyboard breaks down the script into scenes, and we draw out each key moment so that you can really visualise the animation. It also helps us establish the exact action for each scene so that we have a solid plan for asset development and animation. We need to know what will be on-screen when it will be there, what it will do and how we move to the next scene!
Once we have drawn out all the scenes, we use an online tool called Boords to put it together. This means we can send it across to you via a password-protected link and you can add comments directly, meaning that up-to-date feedback from all parties can be seen in a single location.
We storyboard in a sketchy fashion so that we don’t produce a full set of designs which take a huge amount of time, only to find out you don’t like it! In order to make sure you’re happy with how the animation will literally look, we put together a style tile so you can get a really good idea of the visual style. When all the feedback is in and the storyboard is approved we can progress to asset development.
6 – Asset Development
Everything in the video that you see is a graphic that has to be designed, created and set up for motion. In our world, we call each of these graphics an ‘asset’. Unlike designing for print, we have to design assets for animation. This means that any moving parts have to be split into layers so they can move independently from each other – think of a puppet or paper split-pin crafts at school. This means that asset development can be more time-consuming than you might expect in comparison to static graphics for a website or brochure.
The assets are usually designed and layered in Adobe Illustrator because these are vector graphics and can be scaled infinitely (so they don’t lose quality), which makes them much more flexible for animating with. Sometimes we prepare assets in Adobe Photoshop if a more illustrative style is called for.
7 – Animation
Finally the animation stage! During this stage, we bring all the elements together and the videos come to life. Using the storyboard to guide the action, we create the motion in Adobe After Effects, keyframing transformations to each layer to make them move, scale, rotate and much more. Depending on the complexity of the animation, we can animate around 30 seconds a day. Complexity can come through the subtlety of the motion, the number of moving parts or the sheer volume of assets on-screen at any one time. For example, a scene with several characters, moving elements like cars or birds in the background as well as camera movements may mean we can only animate 15 seconds in a day. The voiceover defines the pacing of the animation as a whole and for each scene – we animate in time to the narrative to make sure everything works together.
8 – Feedback, Amends & Delivery
When the production is finished, we render it out and upload it to an online tool we use for gathering video feedback called Screen light. This is a private online setting where you can review just your work behind a password-protected link.
The platform enables you to watch the video and add comments at specific time codes, which saves you from having to make notes offline and awkwardly describe the point in the video you’re trying to feedback on! It’s also great for gathering feedback from the whole team as the link can be shared with everyone involved in sign-off. Having said that we do recommend the number of stakeholders who need to input is kept as low as possible – the idiom “too many cooks” is very applicable to video production!
When all the feedback is in and any changes have been made, we check that you’re happy with the production and it’s approved before licensing the soundtrack and exporting the video to whichever video format you need. This is usually an .MOV or .MP4, but if you have specific requirements we are happy to oblige.
In summary
Because of the complex creative process associated with animation, with every step forwards we ask for approval – this means no nasty surprises for the client and no expensive mistakes from our side either. The deeper we get into production means the knock-on effect of changing something is greater, and additional time means additional budget.
By sticking to our process we can offer a fixed cost at the proposal stage and the client gets an enjoyable experience where they feel involved and confident at every step!
